Colbert de Beaulieu et les monnaies des Aquitains
Résumé
The year following the publication of his Traité de numismatique celtique, Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Beaulieu chooses to explore the margins of the Celtic world and begins a study of dies of the so-called Elusates issues. This foray into the border area of the Aquitanians forced him to collect documentation so sparse and unfamiliar to him, mobilizing through epistolary exchanges a large number of local and foreign correspondents. For health reasons, this study could not be brought to an end. The general purpose of this contribution is to illustrate the working method followed by the scholar and to present his partial results and his hypotheses. We have tried to complement, as far as possible, the modest formatting of his preliminary approach by the findings from the last twenty years. Then the new challenges of Aquitanian numismatics are exposed (multiplication of issues, ranking the oldest classes, location of the mints, ...), presented by the recent monetary discoveries thanks to planned or preventive excavations and surveys.